Translator’s Note

The Typhoon Days follows a young woman going on a three-day trip with her old college sweetheart, which happens to be in perfect tandem with an unexpected typhoon. What I love about the story is the pivotal role weather plays in unfolding and shaping the relationship, as well as the precise yet restrained narration that creates a cocoon-like silence for the two thwarted lovebirds. You’ll notice that the narrator didn’t give a name to her old college sweetheart, who is married, referring to him always as “he.”

—Na Zhong

 

◻︎◻︎◻︎

 

Before turning it off, Xiaoya told her boyfriend Zheng that her phone was broken. She would send it to the store to see if they could fix it. If it wasn’t too pricey, she would have it fixed and make do with it; if not, she’d buy a new one instead. Zheng said it was up to her. He would stop contacting her during the three-day holiday.

After Zheng left for his hometown in Jiangxi, Xiaoya went to the supermarket and bought potato chips, biscuits, pull-apart bread, canned almond chocolate, four towels, two disposable raincoats, one yellow, one green. The first day of the holiday, she got up at seven in the morning and packed each item into her backpack. She had planned to wear her leather shoes, but now that it would be raining, she thought better of it. From the shoe cabinet she rummaged up a pair of sneakers she used to wear in college. Since she started working, she had been wearing nothing but suits and all her old shoes had been put away for years. She tried on the sneakers: they still fit, just looking a little thicker than the leather ones. 

It was drizzling when she went out.

She reached the bus station at eight thirty. The plan was to meet him at the ticket counter. She had bought the tickets online a few days earlier. After she provided the password, the machine buzzed and printed out two tickets, which she folded in half and put into her pocket. Half an hour to go before departure.

From the entrance came a figure dressed in dark green corduroy shirt and pants. Complete with the yellow backpack and shoes, he looked like a tree covered in mud. Xiaoya gazed at him, amused.

“Have you been waiting long?”

“Not really.”

“Is that your backpack? It’s enormous.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you have in it?”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

They reached the platform where their bus would arrive. The ticket gate was still closed; the LED display was showing a red scrolling text. He sat down on the bench. Xiaoya took a seat apart from him and put her backpack in between.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“So far so good.”

“Good. Really bad luck to have this lousy weather, though. I didn’t know the typhoon was coming.”

“Exactly.”

They had booked the tickets and accommodations before the forecast said that there was going to be a typhoon. It was estimated to last for three days and two nights, the exact length of their trip in the mountain. He asked her if she wanted to push it off for a few days. She gave it a thought and said she’d rather go ahead as planned. It wasn’t easy to make all the arrangements. Zheng didn’t always visit his hometown at this time of year, nor did his wife and kid travel often. She had used her phone as an excuse, and it would arouse suspicion if it had stayed broken for too long.

People were gathering on the platform as the departing time drew near. When Xiaoya came back from the restroom, the bus had arrived and half of the crowd had already boarded. The two of them hurried to get on and find two seats. He let Xiaoya in first, remembering that she liked to sit by the window, and began squeezing their backpacks into the baggage rack overhead. 

Xiaoya asked him to hold on for a second and took out the chocolate from the backpack. The can opened and shut with a cracking noise, the sound a man makes when he lights up a cigarette. She ate a piece and gave one to him, sitting cross-legged on the padded seat. In her front-right direction someone kept turning back to watch them. Xiaoya kept her head down and veiled herself behind her lowered hair. Once the stranger’s glance dimmed, she looked over and saw the back of a pony-tailed village woman in a dull, indefinable color, sitting beside an empty seat. 

In a lowered voice, they talked along the way until they were exhausted, then they reclined their seats and rested with their eyes closed. As the bus approached Zhejiang, more and more three- or four-story houses came into view, studded across the fields. It kept raining, the sky murkier than it was in the morning, and he seemed to have fallen asleep. Xiaoya gazed out the window despite her drowsiness. As instructed by the inn they were staying at, they needed to get off at the gas station right before the last stop, across which they had to wait for another bus to take them to the base of the mountain.

Probably finding it a little cold, he stirred and covered himself with the jacket he had taken off when he got on the bus. Half of the jacket slid onto Xiaoya’s lap like a dark, moonless night, and a hand sneaked up her leg. She smiled at the window. The view remained the same, houses leading to more houses.

Eventually she fell asleep, too.

At some point she woke up to an altercation, men and women blaming the driver for making them miss the temple they were visiting, committing a sacrilege against the Buddha. The driver, incensed, said that no one had ever asked him to stop. More passengers came forward and merged into a group, repeating their demand even more vehemently and requesting the driver to send them back. He refused, so the bus was held where it was, the puddles rising around its wheels.

“Why do all the middle-aged women sound the same?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Xiaoya said.

“You won’t end up like that, will you?”

“You think I’ve changed?”

At last the standoff was resolved. The group begged the driver, saying that they were too old to carry their luggage across the road to wait for the return bus. The driver agreed to drop them off on the other side of the road. It took him about half a minute. The group left with their luggage, the person in the front holding a bright bouquet above his head in the misty rain. 

 

◻︎◻︎◻︎

 

They waited for the second bus for a long time. His  back was drenched. 

He didn’t bring an umbrella. She had never seen him bring one and had asked him about it, to which he replied that he enjoyed walking in the rain and the freedom it brought him, as if he was rebelling against the will of some higher being. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

“What if it’s a downpour?”

“Then I’ll just stay inside.”

The umbrella they were sharing was a gift that came with the purchase of two gallons of cooking oil, and had been duct-taped to the bottle; Zheng liked its blue color. Now the rain, growing thicker, penetrated the fabric and ran down the shaft until it disappeared under her sleeve. 

He went to get a cigarette at a bodega nearby.

“The owner said there weren’t many buses, sometimes it didn’t come even once every hour. He offered to give us a ride.”

“For how much?”

“Eighty.”

The fare for the bus was four yuan per person. Without saying yes or no, Xiaoya stared into the vaporish rain in the distance, clutching her umbrella.

Ten minutes later the bus came. Streaks of rainwater ran down the bus aisle. The front row was occupied by a man carrying a sheet of pale green glass. 

“See, I told you so!” the conductor yelled at him. “Shouldn’t have let you on in the first place. You’ve left no room for them to sit.”

“But it’s raining. There’s nothing I can do about it.” the man said. He did nothing more than lifting his fingers. 

Eventually the two of them had to sit on the engine cover facing the first row, confronted with their pale green reflections in the glass.

He dashed into the inn as soon as they arrived, leaving Xiaoya trying to close her umbrella under the roof. Like all the other inns in this village, it was a three-story house, with a yard, a dining room on the first floor, and guest rooms on the second and third floor. In the dim, unlit dining room, three women were trimming vegetables at a traditional square table. They looked up at the sound of the footsteps. Xiaoya noted that they were from two generations. 

The youngest of the three came over to greet them. 

“Big rain, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you have a reservation?”

“Yes.”

She wiped her hands on her clothes and dug out the registration book from the drawer of the reception desk.

“A single room with a King bed?”

She repeated the information when Xiaoya didn’t answer her the first time.

“Right.” Xiaoya said.

He paced across the room and leaned against the door frame to watch the rain hammering down the yard.

The innkeeper handed Xiaoya the keys.

“Your room is on the second floor. Use the stairs outside and walk down the aisle until you reach the last one at the end.”

She didn’t ask them for their IDs.

The room was quite small, with a bed and a TV set. Something yellow flashed at them when the door opened. It was the curtains. 

He let out a cry when he went up to open the window. “We’ve got a balcony!”

It was hidden behind the curtains.

“I know,” Xiaoya said. “I saw the pictures when I booked the room. The ones with balconies are fifty yuan more expensive than the ones without.”

He came back and pulled her into his arms.

She sniffed at his neck, like a puppy.

“If it keeps raining like this, we can drink tea and admire the mountain from here.”

“Sounds good. I’ve brought some good tea.”

She opened her backpack. On the top was the bread, beneath it two small tins of tea, black and green. Then there were the towels, the raincoats, her travel-size kits, three 100 ml bottles.

“You’ve brought everything with you.”

Xiaoya smiled. Carefully she straightened the towels, spread two of them over the pillows, and hung the other two in the bathroom. 

Then she closed the bathroom door behind her.

He looked at the pink towels neatly laid over the yellowish pillowcases, the two plum blossoms embroidered in the right-down corners, facing the same direction. They reminded him of the dowry his parents’ generation would receive when they got married.

From the bathroom came the sound of flushing. He walked over and called, “Xiaoya.”

No response.

“Xiaoya?”

He waited by the door and leapt at her when she came out.

“What are you doing?”

Holding her in his arms, he moved towards the window and reached out a hand to close the curtains. 

“Wait.” Xiaoya cried.

“What’s wrong?”

“Let’s go down and eat first.”

“Why?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No.”

So they went down. 

 

◻︎◻︎◻︎

 

Other guests were already sitting in the dining room. There were seven or eight of them, men and women, old and young, seated at a big round table. 

Xiaoya and he picked a table against the wall. 

Only after sitting down did they notice the woodcut painting on the center of the wall. Like a piece of papercut for window display, it featured a Chinese character 發 with motifs of flower, bird, fish, and insect in the four corners, though less poetically, it meant “bringing in wealth.” 

Xiaoya indicated it to him with her eyes.

The innkeeper came to their table to take orders.

“What do you have?” he asked.

“Come to the kitchen with me.”

 They followed her into the kitchen. On the dark gray floor sat a few plastic basins with fish and shrimps swimming in the water. There weren’t a lot of them, just a few handfuls of translucent dark red shrimps and two or three fish. Sliced vegetables piled up like hills on the chopping board on the counter. Coral-colored shrimps steaming in a china plate.

 “Is this ready to eat?” he asked.

“Yeah. Freshly cooked.”

“For which table?”

“None. Take it if you want. Otherwise I’ll serve it to them.”

“We’ll have it.” 

He carried the dish and was about to make his way to the exit when the woman pulled him back and sprinkled a handful of chopped scallions over the shrimps.

They also ordered wild vegetable stir fry, free-range chicken soup, braised rock frog with bamboo shoots. 

When they returned to their seats, the guests at the other table had started drinking. The men made fun of each other, especially the one who made the good show of bringing a barely filled 60-liter backpack. The butt of the joke snuggled up on the chair and laughed, his face flushed with drunkenness, his nose looking pale and sunken in contrast. “Did you bring your sleeping bag, too?” his companions teased him. 

Xiaoya wiped the chopsticks until they were shiny clean and aligned them on the plate. 

In no time all the dishes were served. He praised the food as he ate, commenting on its freshness, which stood out despite the simple treatment. 

Xiaoya searched for rock frog meat in the dish. She assumed from the name that this type of frog grows up in the crevices in the rocks and feeds on small fish and shrimps in the creeks as well as insects. It doesn’t have much meat but what it has is firm and tender. She gathered what she had found on his side of the plate. 

“Why wouldn’t you eat it?”

“I don’t eat weird stuff.”

“What weird stuff?”

“Frog meat, pigeon meat, turtle, silkworm, rabbit head. Did you forget?”

“Really?”

“I only eat chicken, duck, fish, and red meat.”

He wolfed down the braised rock frog and still craved for more, saying that he’d order it again at dinner. 

“It’s so good. They have a great chef. Is tonight our last meal here? Where are we staying tomorrow night?”

“Up in the mountain.”

“You’ve made the reservation?”

“I booked the inn a long time ago. Originally the plan was to start out early tomorrow morning, hike until noon, stay at the inn overnight before coming down again.”

“Now what are we gonna do?”

“If it keeps raining like this, we’ll have to hire a car to take us there.”

As they talked, all the dishes were emptied. The chicken soup was also delicious. Served directly out of the pot, it had a chill, metallic taste before you realized that your tongue was too burned to taste anything. You had to wait until it recovered to feel the warm deliciousness permeating your mouth. 

“This is so good.”

“Yeah it is. How nice it’d be if I could have something like this near my company.”

“What do you usually have?”

“Food deliveries. You?”

“I bring my own lunch.”

“Who makes it?”

“Myself.”

“You’ve grown up.”

Except for a few chewy chunks, everything – chicken wings, drumsticks, claws – were consumed. They asked for the bill, which added up to but a hundred or so yuan.

Back in their room, he sprawled to his satisfaction on the bamboo chair on the balcony. There were two chairs facing each other across a table. They had a clear view of the outside world: the ceaseless sheets of rain, the mountains in the distance, the lush bamboo forests surging to the wind’s direction.

Xiaoya entered the bathroom again and closed the door behind her. When she got up from the toilet, she still found blood on the tissue. Her periods had come earlier than she’d expected. She came out to find him stretching his arms to the sky and crossing them behind the back of his head, obviously enjoying himself. She moved to his side. He pulled her onto his lap and raked his fingers through her hair. 

“You’ve cut your hair.”

“I had it cut right after college. Shorter hair means less shampoo.”

“Nonsense.”

“It’s eco-friendly. Besides, I’m poor.”

He covered his lips on hers so she couldn’t speak.

“Let’s get back inside.”

Xiaoya stopped him. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

“What?”

She whispered something in his ears.

“What?”

She wrapped her arms around his neck.

He covered his face with his hands. When he put them down there was a bitter smile on his face. 

“Sorry. It took me by surprise, too.”

“Well, guess there’s nothing we can do now but drink tea and watch the mountain.”

Getting sulky, she got off his lap and sat down on the other chair. 

For a few minutes they looked at the mountain in silence. 

Finally, he got up and made for the door, saying that he’d go borrow the tea set. A moment later, Xiaoya heard someone talking right below their balcony. There were more than two people – she could hear laughter and roars of people she didn’t know – they sounded like the guests at the other table earlier. 

He returned with a teapot and a pair of cups. He put them on the table and whispered: “We need to keep our voice down. Quite a few people are sitting downstairs. They’ve probably heard what we just said.”

They sat face-to-face without a word.

He brewed the maofeng tea Xiaoya had brought. The water here was clearer than what they had in the city, even the tap water tasted sweeter, and there was no white residue at the bottom of the electric kettle after the water was boiled. He followed the ritual of kung fu tea: washed the tea leaves and warmed the teacups with hot water, added hot water into the teapot again, and gently poured the infusion into the two cups. 

Xiaoya stared at the motif on the outside of her teacup, a man and a woman reading a scroll book together. It was Baoyu and Daiyu reading Romance of the West Chamber from Dream of the Red Chamber. The dark blue line did a great job outlining the figures but went a bit askew when it came to Baoyu’s eyes, lending him a slightly absent-minded look. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

He sighed. “Come enjoy the view with me.”

Xiaoya held the cup in her hand, covering up the two faces.

Another span of silence passed. As always, he was the one who would make an effort to strike up a conversation.

“Look at the mountain right across from us. Here comes the wind, and one by one the bamboo trees start rocking, from one end to the other.”

“Right.”

“What does it look like to you?”

“What?”

“You go first.”

Xiaoya looked up. Over the top of the mountain, the bamboo leaves rippled from right to left, the movement small but discernible, traveling across like an earthquake. Despite the rain, the clouds were visible, sailing even faster than the bamboo waves, forever out of their reach. 

“The green waves chase after the white clouds.”

He contemplated her composition. “Too straightforward.”

“But that’s what it is – the wind blows, the green waves chase after the white clouds.”

“Still. Too straightforward.”

“The typhoon comes, the rain pours down, the wind blows, the green waves chase after the white clouds.”

He ignored her and said: “To me it looks like a hand is brushing against a small animal’s fur. Look, the fur stands up layer by layer.”

“Right.” Xiaoya said. “It also looks like a woman who’s making a baby. There’s her head, her breasts, her belly – why is it a bit protruded? – she’s already having one.”

 

◻︎◻︎◻︎

 

The whole afternoon went by like this.

It was already evening when the innkeeper announced dinner from downstairs. Bored with sitting on the balcony, he had already returned to the room to watch TV. Xiaoya stayed there, watching the rain pouring down. Were it not for the weather, they could have been exploring the mountain. Instead it had been raining for the whole day, the mountain was soaked through, the mud darkened, the puddles glistening. Clouds lingered in the sky, gray and gloomy. The tea, after five or six refills, turned cold in the pot.

“Let’s go down to eat.”

He yawned without letting go of the remote control, still hooked to what was showing.

“What’s so interesting about it? We aren’t here to watch TV.”

“I don’t want to watch it, either.” He grabbed Xiaoya’s waist. 

Xiaoya kissed him. They turned over and over on the bed and made love briefly before going down.

Once again the other guests had arrived earlier than them and were sitting at the same table, face flushed with their conversation.

Now that he was familiar with ordering, he went straight into the kitchen and ordered fish head soup, mushroom and baby bok choy stir-fry, beef stew, and the braised rock frog with bamboo shoots that he had decided to reorder at lunch. 

The lights were turned on as it was getting dark. He noticed a sturdy-looking glass bottle on the table along with rice bowls, chopsticks, and tea kits. The liquid inside was a light red, liqueur-like. He drew near and found immersed in it some round, hairy berries – wax berries.

“Auntie, did you make this?”

The innkeeper came over and said yes.

“I’ll have some.”

Intrigued, he settled into his seat and held up his cup to receive the liqueur. The innkeeper tipped the bottle and poured some into his cup. She asked Xiaoya if she would like to try. Xiaoya shook her head. The woman was about to put the bottle away when he stopped her: “Not yet. I’ll keep it for later.”

“Alright. Take it easy.”

A drinker is a slow eater. With a faint smile, he sipped the drink and nibbled at the food, as if relishing a secret pleasure that defeated description. Xiaoya filled her bowl and swept the rice in the center to the sides, building a valley with her chopsticks. She gathered the food into the valley and sent it down with the rice. She didn’t know him to be a big drinker. Back when they were in college, she had had a few cans of beer with him, but not very often. Many details had gone blurry. Day by day, they went to classes together and everything was unruffled and intact until it came to the breaking point.

The other table erupted into laughter. A round-faced man was reminiscing about something that had happened over ten years before. She listened to his voice as it got louder and quieter, not always audible in such a big room. But as the story got more improbable, the room hushed down, even the cooking noises from the kitchen grew quieter, as if eager to hear what had happened. 

“So he pulls a worm off the man’s eyes.”

“How can one have worms in the eyes?”

“Exactly! That’s what they ask, too – how can you have worms in your eyes? Everyone goes to see the doctor and worms are detected in their eyes. And he says, ‘Oh my goodness, this is contagious, that’s why you’ve all got worms in your eyes. As it drags on the worms will grow into maggots and eventually it’ll be hopeless.’ Of course the mountain folks have never heard of anything like this. They’re freaked out and beg him for help. He says, ‘Don’t worry. I have the cure for it,’ and from his pocket he produces the medicine.”

The audience laughed.

“The medicine is extremely expensive, precisely how much I don’t remember. Imagine, this was in the 80s. How much was I earning before I went abroad? The con man swindled them just like that. It was unheard of.”

Xiaoya wanted to laugh, too. Nothing was too strange in this world. She looked at him and realized that he wasn’t listening, a clouded look in his eyes.

“I’ll have another cup.”

 

◻︎◻︎◻︎

 

He couldn’t have enough of the liqueur and decided to bring it back to their room.

“It’s made from baijiu. Pretty strong, but tasty.”

He went downstairs to dump the leaves and swirled the teapot clean. Then he came back a filled pot and drank one cup after another on the balcony until he was too drunk to locate the door handle. Around midnight Xiaoya heard someone bumping against the balcony door, just loud enough to wake her up. She felt the weather with her body when she got up to let him in: the wind was even stronger than in the day.

They didn’t get up until noon. The rain and the wind persisted. Last night she didn’t sleep well and kept shifting in bed, afraid of staining the sheet. He slept like a stone and snored thunderously, nonstop. 

“Didn’t know that you snored.”

“Did I? I normally don’t. Only after drinking.”

“Since when did you become such a drinker?”

“Yeah.”

“Be careful.”

She looked down from the balcony and saw a man in the yard, his clothes half-wet. 

People started to walk down the slope, most likely setting out for the mountain. 

“See? It’s okay to hike.”

“Right.”

“Are we going?”

“It’s not safe with the rain. And your umbrella isn’t sturdy enough. Let’s hire a car.”

Xiaoya called a driver from the landline. The driver sounded a little hesitant and urged them to think twice. Xiaoya said they’d already paid for their accommodation in the mountain and had to go. The driver thought for a while and made up his mind: “Alright. Let’s go.”

They packed their luggage, checked out at the inn, and waited for the driver down the end of the slope.

He showed up in a big van. They were the only passengers: Xiaoya chatted with the driver on the front seat, while he took to the silence and darkness at the back of the van.

“Uncle, would you say that the local bamboo shoots are particularly tasty?”
“The ones you can get are dried bamboo shoots, and you need to know how to cook them. Some people bring them back but have no idea what to do with them. It’ll be a disaster.”

“We had some chicken soup last night. Very fresh.”

“Is that so.”

“Was the free-range chicken raised here?”

“No way they gave you free-range chicken. How much do you think one costs?

“Then what did we have?”

“Just regular chicken bought in town.”

“Really. Well, it was good enough.”

Finally, the driver asked what seemed to have been weighing on his mind: “Why did you pick today out of all day to hike? Do you see anyone beside the three of us?”

“We didn’t know the typhoon was coming.” Xiaoya answered. “We didn’t hear about it until we booked everything.”

The driver burst out laughing. Then he told them about his local connections, how he could take care of everything for you, from car rental to accommodation to tickets to tourist attractions. Since this time they couldn’t fully enjoy the trip, they should come again and let him handle their trip. His clients included not only Chinese but also foreigners, who would call him to pick them up once they arrived at the bus station. They wouldn’t even bother asking about the price.

“So you speak English?”

“Nope.”

“Then how can you understand them?”

“I just can.”

As they talked, a tall bamboo tree around the next corner fell down and slit the road like a sharp knife. It was followed by a second tree, a third one. Behind the car windows they couldn’t hear a noise, so the incident unfolded in front of their eyes in complete silence. Like someone who was fed up with the world, the bamboo trees wordlessly dropped to the ground about twenty or thirty meters away from the van. Unthinkingly the driver pulled the brake, without a word, without even realizing it. The van came to a halt. 

He showed great interest in the incident. Sliding the door open, he hopped off the van to see what had happened, umbrella-less. 

“Watch out!”

He walked ahead. A pile of mud had slid off along with the bamboo trees and collapsed on the ground like sea waves.

“This is a mudslide, isn’t it? Oh my god, I’ve never seen one before.” he cried.

The driver got out of the car. He opened the door casually, with one hand in his pants pocket, the other scratching his head. Only now did she see what he was wearing – a puffy, lantern-shaped jacket in gray, the kind of color to disappear in. 

Both he and the driver took out their phones to take pictures. She couldn’t hear what they were saying. They captured the scene from the front and the sides.

The rain kept coming down. It was still dangerous – the loose soil might release more bamboo trees – but Xiaoya didn’t call them back, perhaps because they looked so relaxed and detached, which made her feel that time was plenty before the red alert light came on. 

On their way back to the van, he and the driver were chatting and laughing.

“All of them dropped to the ground.” he announced as he crawled into his seat and clutched with both hands to the back of the front seat. “I’ve taken pictures.”

“They’ve blocked the road. Now there’s no way up.”

“Does the mudslide happen a lot when it rains?” she asked.

“Of course not. It’s quite rare. We don’t get a lot of downpours like this, either. Otherwise how is it possible to do business? This time it’s because of the typhoon.”

“What shall we do then? Are we still going up?”

“No way. Didn’t you see the road? It’s blocked.”

“There’s no other road?”

“Even if there were I wouldn’t go. My van would get stuck in the mud for sure.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the van got stuck in the mud. The driver asked them to help him push the van. 

He told Xiaoya to stay in her seat and got off by himself. Pushing on the side door, he and the driver managed to turn the van around.

“Down the mountain we go!” the driver cried.

 

◻︎◻︎◻︎

 

The van sailed through the rain smoothly.

When they passed the fields, the driver said: “These are our fields.”

When they passed a boisterously overflowing river, the driver said: “There used to be a bridge.”

As they came to the entrance of the village, the driver suggested they stay at one of the inns run by his acquaintances. 

“Just take a look. No pressure if you don’t like it.”

They agreed. 

The first one he brought them to was also a three-story house. The inn had just washed the bedsheets, but there was nowhere to hang them to dry in the yard, so the sheets were spread on the corner bends of the handrails, dripping down from the third floor to the second, the second to the first. A little girl was watching TV on the sofa with a bowl in her hands and a black dog crouching by her side. The girl and the dog turned around and tossed a glance at them when they entered. 

The owner of the second inn was a big man. Surprised to see visitors in such miserable weather, he generously offered them their deluxe suite.

“It’s upstairs. You …” Before he could finish, the lights in the lobby went out.

After a phone call, he found that the whole village had a power outage.

“Might have something to do with the mudslide.” the driver said. “Maybe the bamboo trees had knocked off the cables.”

The innkeeper found a flashlight in the drawer and led them upstairs. The inn was decorated in the style of a western film, with crude-wood floor and walls and stairs and furniture. They prowled along the endless aisle that was as narrow as the intestine of an animal.

He stopped and said he’d rather return to the inn they had checked out this morning. 

The driver didn’t complain. They went down together and he took them back to the inn.

The dining room was cavernous, dark, with no one inside. After they called for a few times, the oldest of the three women they’d met on the first day came out from the kitchen.

“Ai-ya, how come you’re back? I thought you were going up the mountain.”

“There’s been a mudslide.”

“Oh my goodness. How dangerous.”

“The power is out here, too?”

“Right. We just called, they said they were fixing it. Wait a second, let me find you some candles.”

Granny returned to the kitchen. The dining room had never felt so immense and so spooky on a rainy blackout night like this.

“It’s great to be back.” he said. “Can’t wait to have the wax berry liqueur again.”

 

◻︎◻︎◻︎

 

The other guests had already left. Granny said they were the only visitors who chose to stay in the village. 

“I thought it would just rain for a day or two. Looks like it’s gonna get even bigger.”

The state grid said they were fixing the cable, but three or four hours had passed and it was still pitch dark. Granny found some empty beer bottles and stuck into their necks some ancient candles she had found in the drawers. A cluster of candlelight stood in the dark. He sipped at the drink with half-closed eyes.

The innkeeper came back and chit-chatted with them. With no power for the rice cooker, she cooked the rice on the brick stove. She told them about her son with pride and asked about their age.

“Old enough to have a son.” he said.

“How old is he?”

“Four.”

“You two don’t look like it. Many of the young folks get married late nowadays. My son doesn’t even have a girlfriend. Not that I’m not pressuring him. He’s been rebellious since he was little. When he was in school, I pushed him to study, and he skipped school to learn how to cut hair. Well, go for it if you want, I couldn’t change his mind so I let him have his way. Once I paid the tuition for him, he wanted to learn Japanese. It’s either this or that! Now I’ve learned my lesson: He can do whatever he likes, I’ll neither support nor oppose it.”

“What does he do now?”

“He owns a shop in town.”

“That’s not bad.”

“Has grown up a little bit.”

Outside, the wind and rain ravaged the night. Inside, they felt warm and cozy and chatted until almost ten o’clock. Reclining in a bamboo chair, Granny said that during the low season, she used to have all the young staff go home and stay here by herself.

“Were you scared?” Xiaoya asked.

“Well, a little bit at the beginning. Then one day it occurred to me – a clear conscience makes a soft pillow.”

Before they retired upstairs, he asked for another pot of wax berry liqueur. The innkeeper gave them two thermoses.

“The red one has freshly boiled water, you can drink from it. The water in the green one is lukewarm, use it to wash your feet.”

“Got it.”

“Have you remembered that?”

Xiaoya thought for a second and said: “Yes. I remember it this way: The red one is ripe and ready to eat. The green one hasn’t ripened yet, so not edible.”

The woman laughed. “Smart girl. Just like my son.”

Xiaoya washed her feet (she saved half of the water for him) and went to bed. He drank by himself on the balcony until past midnight and plunged into the bed without washing or undressing himself. She turned over and nudged him, but he didn’t stir. In the corner the flickering candlelight cast the beer bottle into a thin, flat shadow. When she pushed him again, she realized that he was crying: Tears streamed down from the corner of his eyes, the thin line zigzagging before disappearing behind his ear. 

It was the first time she’d seen him cry since they met over ten years before. Xiaoya lay down again, searching for words. Eventually he started talking.

“My son is the sweetest kid. Whenever I ask him if he wants any toy, he says he doesn’t need one.”

“Right.”

“Before I left home, he asked me, ‘Daddy, why aren’t you going to Sanya with us, why can’t we go together?’ I said to him, ‘Not this time.’ He didn’t press for an explanation and just said, ‘Alright. Good-bye Daddy.’”

“He is pretty sweet.”

“The whole world is trying to get something from me, and he’s the only one who asks for nothing. Since the day he was born, I’ve been feeling that I’m living for him alone.”

“Right.”

“I’ve only cried twice in my life, both when I was reading the Bible. The first time was when God’s voice came from the cloud, saying, ‘This is my beloved son: hear him.’ The second time was when Jesus was crucified and he asked, ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me… but if this is thy will, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ I don’t know why, but my tears wouldn’t stop when I read these lines.”

Xiaoya cried with him. Fumbling around on the bed, she found his hand and placed it on her belly.

A moment later, she turned to him to wipe his tears, only to find him lying there with his eyes closed and a peculiar look on his face. “Are you drunk?” she asked.

He flung his arm over his chest, slurring, “I’m drunk.”

Sounded pretty sober to her. She asked again, “Are you awake or asleep?”

“Asleep.”

Vexed, she jumped out of the bed.

 

◻︎◻︎◻︎

 

The next morning, he woke up as if nothing had happened and found Xiaoya showing her back to him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Leave me alone.”

“What happened?”

“Don’t touch me.”

“I want to touch you.”

“Nothing will come out of it.”

“Just my luck! This is our last day.”

“Nothing I can do about it.”

“This is so dull.”

“As if we have done it before.”

“You didn’t want to.”

“We didn’t have the courage. We knew nothing about it.”

“I had the courage. You didn’t.”

Xiaoya flipped over. “Liar. If you had the courage, why did we break up?”

He didn’t answer.

“Don’t you complain. It’s too late to come back now and ask for what you didn’t get – even Heaven wouldn’t let you have it.”

He lit up a cigarette.

Xiaoya got off the bed and walked to the balcony, crying.

“Come on. Come inside.”

She didn’t move. He got off the bed to drag her.

“What are you doing, standing there barefoot like that?” He pulled her back into the room.

She collapsed into the bed, still crying.

“It’s hard to say who was right or wrong. After all these years, the last thing I want is to come to this wilderness and have a fight with you. It’s absolutely pointless.”

He sighed and lay down beside her.

“Alright, forget about it.”

“It’s ridiculous if you think about it. Back then we thought it was impossible to stay together, us going back to our hometowns. Doesn’t it sound absurd to you now? The two cities are just an hour apart by plane, at most three by train. And who’d think that you would move here for work? Were you coming for your wife? If you could do it for her, why couldn’t you do it for me?”

“Forget about it.”

 

◻︎◻︎◻︎

 

The rain got softer; maybe the typhoon was leaving. A fly appeared out of nowhere and sat on the rim of the teacup.

“We’d better leave as soon as possible. There are flies everywhere, even in the bathroom. I don’t even want to go inside.”

Xiaoya started packing. The plastic bag left open on the table, two flies popped up on the leftover bread like a pair of moles.

“Look! A bird!” he cried from the balcony.

A large bird with a long tail flew low across the air and perched on a short tree on the left side of the yard.

“It’s so pretty! Is it a phoenix?”

They laughed.

“It’s a he, only male birds have such bright feathers.”

“Looks like bird-of-paradise.”

“Ang Lee must have seen birds like this when he’s directing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, otherwise he wouldn’t think of shooting the scene with them soaring above the bamboo forests.”

Back into the room, Xiaoya folded a few pairs of wet socks into balls and packed them into her backpack. As she put on her sneakers, she found the sole of her right shoe had come off, with half of the heel dangling off her foot.

“My shoes are worn out.”

He came over to examine the sole. “Maybe the rubber has gone too old.”

“I bought these when I was in college.”

“That’s a long time ago.”

She decided to leave them behind in the trash bin. Staring at them for a while, she started laughing.

“What is it?”

“It reminds me of my mother.”

“How?”

“Whenever she goes traveling, she’ll bring with her something well-worn – a pair of shoes, underwear, socks – and just leave them behind once they are used. In the end at every single place she’s visited, there’s at least one of her ragged possessions. The funniest thing is, why does she have so many things to throw away?”

He laughed, too. Then he asked, “How’s your mother? Is she well?”

“Not bad. She’s pretty lonely back home. My brother and I only go back during the lunar New Year.”

“How’s your brother?”

“Still in Shenzhen.”

“Your father?”

“He passed away the second year after my graduation. Stomach cancer.”

“Oh.”

 

◻︎◻︎◻︎

 

It was the same driver who came to pick them up.

He burst out laughing when he saw Xiaoya shuffling out of the room in her slippers.

“Why are you wearing slippers?”

“My shoes have worn out.”

“You have the worst luck ever. Looks like you two have come here to chase the typhoon.”

She sighed.

“Next time. Next time when you come, give me a call.”

Neither of them answered.

On their way, a large bird flew across in front of their van.

“Look! What was the bird that just flew by?”

The driver didn’t take his eyes off the road.

“Look, it’s gone. A beautiful bird, with a long tail.”

“That’s a pheasant.”

“What?”

“We’ve got lots of them here. Sometimes we would go into the forest to hunt them.”

“That was a pheasant?”

The driver answered perfunctorily and asked them if they’d had lunch.

“Not yet.”

“Let me bring you somewhere nice. I know a couple of good places.”

“No worries. We’ll grab something near the station.”

“There’s no restaurant there.”

They were hesitant to believe him. 

“Trust me.”

The driver dropped them off and turned back. They came to the entrance of the station to find its two sides empty. After getting the return tickets, they walked around and spotted around the street corner a noodle joint tucked away inside a building, accessible through an obscure entrance. He decided to give it a go.

The joint was half-circular-shaped. A girl in a white robe could be seen partially from behind the counter. On her right hand on the floor stood a high stand, displaying a majestically gigantic, army green toy tank. Scattered across the room were all men, thick around the waist, waiting to be fed. By the window three men sat side by side reading newspapers, not having anything. 

“This place feels a bit weird.”

“We’ll leave as soon as we’re done.”

They both ordered noodle soup with pork shreds topping. While he was downing the soup, Xiaoya noticed a snail crawling on the window glass, straight as the character 一 (Yi)，with its belly to her. When she looked again it had curved into a “C.”

He fell asleep on their way back. Again she sat by the window, he by the aisle. Gradually the landscape became more populated and developed, but it had taken on a disillusioned look after the past few days’ rain. Stores by the street were swamped, merging into a watery whole. At the door of every household stood a forlorn figure, pants rolled up to his knees, scooping water from the house using a basin with a sorrowful futility. Trucks steeped in mud. The dark yellow reflections of houses, cables, and trees.

They parted ways at the station.

She took the subway and transferred to the bus. The phone was switched on.

The entrance of her community was also flooded. The bus station, the tiniest island in the world, was big enough for few people to stand. Before the bus came to a stop, everyone was looking out the window and gauging the distance. Shoes were taken off and carried in hands, preparations were made for the worst battle they’d ever had to fight. 

She leapt onto the island. Thinking about giving him a call, she took out her phone but instead found a missed call from Zheng. She dialed back.

“How’s everything?” he asked. “Did you get your phone fixed?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. What about the typhoon? How’s the apartment?”

“Nothing serious.” Xiaoya answered. “The community entrance is a little wet. But the news said that tomorrow the typhoon would be gone.”